The Power to Become

By the time Josh was four years old, a cascade of loss and powerlessness had already begun. He was removed from his mother’s custody and his home in Moscow, Russia, to an orphanage in the Ukraine. He was later joined there by his two younger sisters. Josh has some memory of his mother, who committed suicide. He recalls being told his allegedly abusive father died in prison. He believes a grandmother died of cancer, one grandfather was murdered, and the other died from complications of alcoholism. After seven years in the orphanage, eleven-year-old Josh and his sisters were adopted by an American family and moved to Amarillo, Texas.